HitFilm 3 Pro

Very good

Let’s get the “Full Disclosure” out of the way first: I was a Beta tester for Hitfilm Pro 3, I purchased my license directly from FxHome (So I am not an “Amazon Verified” purchaser), and FxHome staff asked me to write a comprehensive review, both the good and the bad, for their Amazon sales page. FxHome has not offered me any compensation for this review, and I made it clear to them that I would open this review by acknowledging that I was asked for this. In brief, I think Hitfilm is a fantastic tool that has a lot to offer the video artist, but it still has a few weaknesses holding it back from being the “all-in-one” studio FxHome hopes for it to become.That said, I’ve been using Hitfilm since it’s “Ultimate 2” version, and Hitfilm has basically replaced After Effects for my own own work. So, why the four stars? As an FX/Composting program, it's fantastic. The editor needs work to earn that fifth star, but read on!What is Hitfilm Pro 3? It is the latest iteration of FxHome’s compositing and VFX software for the aspiring independent film maker. The name change hints at a bigger and better future for the software. Hitfilm is primarily a compositing software package that also includes a powerful particle simulator and integration of 3D models along with versatile keying, matting, color correction and grading effects, creative tools and a few unique, specialized effects. It also offers a basic, no-frills editor for assembling individual clips into full film. The easiest (although not-quite-accurate) comparison is a “lite” version of a combination of Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, VideoCopilot’s Element 3D and Red Giant’s Trapcode Particular. The Hitfilm Pro 3 package also comes with the HItfilm Plug-In Suite, which was previously available as a separate package. These plug-ins work in a variety of established NLE’s, Including Sony Vegas, Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere (and After Effects), Final Cut Pro X and Apple Motion. If that isn’t enough, Hitfilm Pro 3 also comes bundled with a version of Imagineer’s Mocha Planar Tracking Software, allowing you to do 3D camera solves to insert elements in 3D space to existing footage, or to do planar mask tracking to speed up rotoscoping processes. The entire stand-alone compositor, external plug-in suite, mocha package is $299 (USD) and, that’s a TWO COMPUTER license. The plug-in suite will run on any and all compatible hosts on a single computer from a single install. Finally, Hitfilm Pro 3 is OFX compatible, and, in coming months, third-party add-ons will be available from companies like NewBlue, Red Giant, RE:Vision, and Sapphire. On paper, it’s almost a must-buy. It’s also a purchase, not a subscription, if that matters to you.TRY BEFORE YOU BUY: Look, there’s a demo version available from FX home. The only limitation is export is limited to a 30 second, SD resolution YouTube upload. Read this review, then go download the demo and manual from FxHome and give it a try. If you like, buy!THE “BOTTOM LINE”: Below are my “bottom line” reviews for owners of other NLE software. My detailed review (good AND bad) is below that. Also, from this point on, I’m just calling it HFP3. ;-)IF YOU ALREADY OWN HITFILM EXPRESS/ULTIMATE 2: Look, just go upgrade, already. Seriously, the new unified 3D work space makes is so much easier to integrate things like 3D models and particle systems, and you can now use 3D models as particle textures. Just those changes alone make it worth the upgrade, and we won’t even talk about the additional new features at this point. Go. Now.IF YOU ALREADY USE SONY VEGAS: HFP3 is a suite of 130 plug-in effects ranging from utility effects like Curves, Chroma Keying and Color Balance to specialty effects like Electricity and Muzzle Flashes. It also has a free compositing program that integrates with Vegas, allowing you to send a media clip directly from your Vegas timeline into HFP3. Vegas can read a HFP3 project’s Editor timeline directly as a media clip. Vegas users should just stop reading this review and go buy the package. Period. Go to Sony and upgrade to the Vegas Pro Suite and get Hitfilm, Sound Forge, Production Assistant and some other extras.IF YOU ALREADY USE FCP, AVID, OR PREMEIRE: HFP3 is a suite of 130 plug-in effects ranging from utility effects like Curves, Chroma Keying and Color Balance to specialty effects like Electricity and Muzzle Flashes. It also has a free compositing program to play with.IF YOU ALREADY USE AFTER EFFECTS: HFP3 does not offer you all the power of an AE/E3D/Particular combination, and most of the effects in the Plug-in Suite already exist in AE equivalents. However, some of the specialized effects, such as muzzle flashes and atomic particles, may be very useful for you. Additionally, the HF3software itself will be easy for you to learn, and, in many ways has a faster workflow than AE. For example, HFP3 has a “unified” 3D space, where video layers, 3D models and particle effects all exist in the same 3D space, allowing complex interactions without needing to mess around with occlusion layers. HFP3 is still worth a look as an alternate tool to add to your workflow.IF YOU ALREADY USE FLAME/NUKE/FUSION/BORIS: The Plug-in suite doesn’t run in your hosts. You node-based users might not like HFP3’s layer-based workflow. Boris FX and RED users--look the first thing I tried when I got Hitfilm Ultimate 2 was a 2.5D space nebula. It took me 25 minutes. Doing the same thing in Boris FX took me over an hour. For me, the Hitfilm workflow was faster, but it’s very different from how Boris organizes things. It’s still worth taking a look, because more tools are always a good thing, but, unless you’re also using one of the other packages mentioned in the paragraphs above, there may not be anything here for you.IF YOU DO NOT OWN ANY OTHER NLE/COMPOSITING SOFTWARE: This is a very solid package that can yield some very impressive results at a very good price point.THE DETAILED REVIEW: Well, now that I’ve written something that sounds like a damn press release, I will discuss varied aspects of the software in more detail, covering strong and weak points....GENERAL INTERFACE: HFP3’s interface is fairly typical--you get a range of rectangular panels that can be moved, re-sized, split and joined however you want. Controls are tabbed, so you can split each control group into it’s own panel, or combine tabs into a single panel. Panel arrangements can be stored and recalled for future used. The interface layout is generally intuitive and quick to navigate, and the customization options make it easy to arrange things for optimum use. Window layouts can be stored for instant recall, or switching on the fly (for example, having a window layout for editing, then switching to a different layout for effects work). The only real issues here are there is no way to send a full-screen preview window to a second monitor (you can detach that panel and put it on the second monitor and make it as big as possible, but that’s not quite the same), and that the UI is optimized for 1080 resolutions--owners of 4K systems will just have to scale up the interface and deal with a bit of fuzziness.HITFILM’S EDITOR: HFP3’s basic workflow separates things into an “Editor” timeline (where you assemble your media clips into a project) and a “Composite Shot” timeline (where you build complex effects and shots to send to the Editor timeline for assembly). Composite shots can be nested inside each other (“embedded,” in HFP3 terms). And it’s the Editor Timeline where HFP3’s current weaknesses most show.HFP3’s editor timeline follows the tried-and-true method of importing clips to a media bin, moving the clips to a trimmer window to select in/out points, then moving the media clip to the Edit Timeline. The Edit Timeline has the standard assortment of Insert/Overlay edit modes, snapping on/off, trimming, slipping, sliding, slicing, rippling, rolling, and muting individual clips. Layers can be re-ordered and re-linked if needed, layers can have effects applied, used varied blend modes, and have opacity changed. Selections of clips can be highlighted and quickly converted to a “Composite Shot” for detailed effects work. All the basic editing tools found in most NLE’s are there to use, so what are the weaknesses?Well, there’s no provisions for multicam at all (Which makes HFP3 unsuitable as a primaryeditor for several types of projects). Effects can only be applied at the clip level, not at the bin, layer or output bus levels. Video transitions are limited pretty much to basic dissolves and a couple of slides. Creating more complex transitions--wipes, gradient wipes, moving transitions, etc--can be created from scratch with composite shots, but a few more transition effects would be useful.There is a master audio meter (Editor timeline only), but no levels for individual tracks. Audio editing is actually the single weakest aspect of HFP3--audio transitions are limited to cross-fades, audio effects are limited to a “Tone” control (Which seems to be one of two preset curves and a center frequency slider) and a Channel Levels control. There are no creative audio effects at all, no way of changing audio speed or pitch, and basically no audio editing whatsoever other than trimming at frame boundaries. Any kind of detailed audio edits are going to have to be done in an outside programs, which brings it’s own hassles (see IMPORT/EXPORT, below).HFP3’s Editor Timeline is also missing a few useful features like defining multiple timeline regions on placing markers on a timeline. HFP3’s Audio and Video tracks are separated to where one can adjust the position of Audio and Video tracks within their panes, but not place tracks in the order of Video 1, Audio 1, Video 2, Audio 2, etc. Also, while HFP3 lets you mute individual tracks, there’s no “solo” function. I don’t find editing video clips in HFP3 to be particularly enjoyable--now I am primarily a Sony Vegas editor, and Vegas does a few things differently from any other NLE, but I still find editing clips in HFP3 feels slow and sluggish. I’ll use HFP3 to quickly assemble a few shots if I have a multi-shot sequence made entirely of Composite Shots to export to Vegas, but, more the most part I don’t use it. That said, I do a lot of event video, so the need for multicam and detailed audio edits are fairly crucial for me. For assembling a cut of a skit or short film where footage is mostly shot single camera, HFP3 does have the tools to allow you to do so.IMPORT/EXPORT: This is another area where HFP3 is relatively weak. HFP3 can import a wide range of audio and video files. Most of your media will cheerfully import, but one caveat in HFP3 is it’s handling of files encoded in h.264. H.264 encoded video can be found in MP4, AVC, MXF, MTS and MOV--pretty much any consumer/prosumer DSLR or camcorder is giving you h.264... For technical reasons we won’t get into here, h.264 is a terrible editing format and any NLE will slow down when dealing with them, but HFP3’s handling of h.264 is particularly slow. In short, you’re going to want to find some sort of third-party software (MPEG Streamclip and Borosoft Media Converter are two choices of many.) to convert your h.264 files to something HFP3 likes better (FxHome recommends Pro-Res or AVCHD).Export is pretty limited, but, honestly, not as bad as some users make it out to be. HFP3 can export directly to Youtube, or to h.264 MP4, (Uncompressed) AVI (Windows), Quicktime (Mac--this reviewer is Windows-based so I can’t go into QT export), 16-bit Open EXR image sequences and 8-bit PNG/JPEG image sequences. That’s it. According the the HFP3 manual you Mac users have full control over codec and quality settings in your QT export, so that’s nice, but codec/quality selection is missing from AVI export. Note there is no WAV, AIFF, MP3 output. Users needing to export audio-only will need to do a workaround by basically exporting a null-video file with audio in it. For Windows this has to be Uncompressed AVI for maximum audio fidelity. That said, for Windows users, the lack of export formats honestly isn’t too much of a problem--PNG image sequences give you the quality of uncompressed AVI at half the disc space, and Open EXR image sequences allow for 16-bit export. The user who needs to move HFP3 files to other software for further work can use that other software to write the image sequences to any other format desired, and, honestly, there are a lot of advantages to rendering image sequences in general. That’s outside the scope of this review, but let it be said that most VFX houses for Film/TV work export Image Sequences, only creating actual video files near the end of the process.For Sony Vegas Pro 13 users you have a special option--load an HFP3 project into your Vegas project and Vegas will treat the HFP3 project’s Editor Timeline as a media clip. Edit the HFP3 project in HFP3 and the changes ripple back to Vegas. The caveat here is how complicated is your HFP3 project! Vegas has to render it’s internal proxy of the HFP3 project before editing--if this is a horribly complex HFP3 project that would take hours to render out...well, that Vegas proxy is going to take awhile.... Still, it’s a very cool feature to have. And, of course, the Hitfilm Plug-ins also work in Vegas, so one could complete basic editing and compositing in HFP3, move the project to the Vegas timeline and grade everything in Vegas using either Sony’s tools or Hitfilm’s.3D MODEL IMPORT AND ANIMATION: This is pretty nice. HFP3 can import models in 3DS, OBJ and LWO formats. Material and scale settings can be adjusted, and textures can be loaded and relinked. At the moment HFP3 only supports texture data for diffuse color and specular maps--transparency, reflection, bump and normal maps will have to wait for future updates. Models can have and environment layer defined for reflections. Models can be broken into animation groups to animate separate sections individually. This is brute force animation be keyframing the separate sections, but for things like cars, copters and planes it’s quite useful. Hitfilm doesn’t support IK of any kind of mo-cap data, so Hitfilm isn’t your tool for adding fully animated characters to your world. Still, within it’s limitations, the ability to directly import 3D models into your projects is very useful indeed--and it’s great for space scenes where one is usually using spaceships and vehicles. Additionally, 3D models can be used as textures in HFP3’s Particle simulator, making it easy to quickly create (for example) asteroid fields or urban sprawl.COMPOSITING AND FX: The “Composite Shot” is where HFP3’s power shines. There is the standard selection of chroma/luma/alpha/color difference keyers which do a nice job of isolating desired elements and offering a lot of control over the matte. A “Set matte” effect allows use of any target layer as the source for a luma/alpha matte, and Hitfilm has the standard array of masking tools for simple cutouts up through roto work.Video and Image layers can be 2D or, converted to 3D and positioned/animated in 3D space. There are dedicated layer types for video/image media, generated media, text media, “null” points, lights, cameras and grade layers (used to apply effects to all lower layers in the stack at once).HFP3 has a very good range of visual effects ranging from several type of simple blurs up through advanced effects like Projection Mapping. A full list of effects would make this already long review insane, so this is something I leave for the reader to research. Instead, we’ll just note a few of the effects missing--Hitfilm has no Warp Stabilizer, and no type of Puppet/Pin warping. Otherwise, whether you want blurs, glow, fire, lightning, glitches, scan lines, film looks, TV damage, etc, etc, etc, HFP3 probably has you covered.Hitfilm currently lacks any kind of scripting/macro/extension system. This is a little annoying, but, by no means critical--honestly, expressions and macros simply speed up certain tasks by using an equation to generate keyframes. So... Just make the keyframes. As an example, you’ll often see After Effects tutorials do things like “Create the expression ‘value=time*50.’” Right, so I have a nice little expression changing a value--Or, I could create a keyframe on Frame 0, then a keyframe at 10 seconds in with a value of 500... Yeah, expressions are kind of nice to have, and I hope FxHome adds them eventually, but, really, it’s not something critical to have; merely convenient.For color grading, HFP3 has some really great tools, starting with your basic levels/curves and continuing with gradient mapping, channel mixing, flares, lens dirt and many others, including a “Grade Transfer” effect that takes a source image and attempts to give a target clip the name type of color, and the “Cine Style” effect, which combines a trendy teal/blue grade, s-curve contrast, 2:35 letterboxing, film grain, and vignettes into an easy-to-use tool. (And all of these effects are in the Plug-ins as well)Speaking of Plug-in’s, Hitfilm Pro 3 is Open FX compliant, which means third-party tools. At the time of this writing, Red Giant’s Universe, Gen Arts Sapphire and some of the Re: Vision Effects are officially supported within HFP3. While NewBlue plug-ins are not (yet) officially supported, I am personally using NewBlue within Hitfilm--except for NewBlue’s Titler Pro, any NewBlue effect or transition I’ve used had performed flawlessly.3D PARTICLE SYSTEM: Hitfilm’s 3D particle simulator is one of it’s core features and very powerful indeed. Emitter types range from points to circles, quads, cubes and sphere’s as well as custom shapes based on the alpha of a target layer. Trajectories include cones, explode, implode, disc, random and targeted at a specific point. Particle textures can be one of the selection of built-in images, or you can used a target layer to define custom particle texture. Animated video clips (or embedded composite shots) can be used as texture sources, as well as 3D models. The particle sim contains full controls for adjusting size, color, alpha, speed, acceleration, rotation (all 3 axes) etc of particles and controls for adjusting physics parameters like mass, friction and bounce. A “Lifetime” panel allows use of “over-time” graphs to animate each and every particle control (for example having a flame particle change to a smoke particle pay using the lifetime graph to change color, rotation, opacity, speed and scale to start with a fast-moving, small, yellow particle that becomes a large, slowly moving, rotating grey particle that fade out.) Forces can be added to simulate wind, gravity or turbulence, and deflectors can be added to cause particles to bounce off objects in the scene. Rounding out the Particle sim are the “mobile emitters” which can be thought of of particles that emit their own particle systems.This reviewer has created animations using the particle simulator to create asteroid planet rings and a fleet of space fighters with 3D model textures, then procedurally created engine thrust and weapons fire (created with mobile emitters) attached to the particle ships with 2D image textures and some forces to turn the weapons fire into “homing” missiles, and deflectors to “kill” the mobile emitter missiles triggering explosion animations, and using a video clip as the particle source to create some massive main explosions. This type of procedural animation would have been a lot more difficult using traditional keyframe animation across every object.The only weaknesses in HFP 3’s particle sim are the lack of any kind of “grid” emitter for creating ordered systems (particle spawning is inherently random), a lack of spherical forces and deflectors (cubes only go so far). And the inability to target a null point as a trajectory setting. Not targeting a point isn’t critical, but there are times when it would be useful.This is a good time to bring up how HFP3 deals with 3D space--you have two basic compositing modes to works with: 2D in which a model, or particle system is computed in full 3D, but composited as a 2D layer, 9which allows further visual effects to be placed directly on the particle or model) or “3D Unrolled” which brings your particles and models into a single 3D space. This allows multiple models and particle systems to properly occlude each other without using depth mattes, z-passes or occlusion layers at the cost of being unable to directly add effects to the model/particle layers.MOTION TRACKING, 3D CAMERA TRACKING AND ROTO: HFP3 itself has tools for 2D point tracking. Either a single point track can be generated (position only) or a two-point tracker generated (position, rotation, scale). Tracks can either be assigned to a point for attaching an effect to a point in the frame, or applied to a layer as a simple stabilizer. HFP3 also comes with a version of Mocha from Imagineer Systems. Mocha is a “planar tracking” package with a “Pro” version costing $1400! The version that ships with HFP3 is stripped down, only containing the camera solve and roto modules, but these two modules add greatly to the functionality of HFP3. Using the camera solver one can generate a 3D space from captured video and even track objects moving in 3D space within the footage. This allows for easy addition of 3D models/set extensions, floating text and other effects in moving footage. Mocha’s planar tracker also allows one to track objects within a scene or break apart a complex object into layer and track each layer, exporting mask data back to Hitfilm as an aid to compositing or isolation. Mocha is it’s own beast, and has it’s own idiosyncrasies and learning curve, but it’s a great addition to the total package.COMMUNITY AND SUPPORT: FxHome maintains an active community for user support. It’s layout isn’t the best (the design is very current, which means thin fonts, lots of white space, and over sized banner images. Best viewed on a tablet.), but is functional. FxHome staff regularly frequent their own forum, so it’s quite common to get advice, help and critique directly from Fxhome staff. The community user base is one of the most helpful on the web--post a question on the forum and, more often than not a staff member will be there with help and advice within 24 hours (not counting weekends. Let ‘em have days off, please.), unless five users in the forum get to it first. The feedback I have gotten from staff and users on the forum has improved my understanding of the software, and challenged me to improve my own work.The two times I have had to open support tickets, my issue was resolved within 48 hours. Customer service is helpful and courteous.FxHome have released over a hundred video tutorials over the lifetime of the Hitfilm line--while some of these tutorials go back to Hitfilm 1, everything in the HF 1 and 2 tutorials applies to 3, and there are also excellent video tutorials from community members. A “Sticky” thread in the forum makes finding tutorials easy.The full product manual can be downloaded from the Support section of the website as well.Since launch in November 2014, the FxHome staff has been keeping up with a regular schedule of updates. At the time of this writing (April, 2015), four updates have been released, with update #5 due for release later this month. Each release has contained bug fixes and UI tweaks, but each release has ALSO contained new effects! FxHome has stated that a goal with HFP3 is to have a more active update/development cycle than previous iterations of the software, and, to date, they’ve more than delivered.CONCLUSION: Well, I kind of did that part already in those paragraphs beginning “IF YOU OWN...” In short, a functional editor, powerful effects and compositing, (limited) 3D model animation and a very powerful physics-based particle, and an effects plug-in package for several other hosts, that installs on two machines for $299? Yeah, you should just go download the demo and the manual from FxHome now. Once you decide to buy, come on back! Amazon awaits.

I own HitFilm since it's first release and love it. I've already finished some private stuff as well as some commercials app teasers and it was funny to do this in only one app: importing, compositing, editing & exporting. During the tests I've compared it with After Effects, which is absolutly an awesome product, but I went back due of the following things:1) It's quit cheaper and you don't need a subcription (per month pay).2) It has a lot of build-in filters & effects w/o need to buy 3rd party stuff.3) The embedded, physical based particle simulator is very powerful4) For most cases, you don't need another app to arrange your work5) It is easier to use (UI)HitFilm isn't created for full broadcast productions with a well defined studio exchange worfklow - it's for indie cutters and homebrew users and if you wonna create some more professional stuff, you can do it, too! It's user interface is well designed and intuitive to use. You can customize it to fit your needs.If you come from HitFilm 2 Ultimate, this is a list of new or improved features:1) Redesigned user interface (graphite style)2) Use 3D objects as particle sources3) Improved 3D tracker (mask paths) w/ bundled Mocha app4) Lots of new filters / effects (audio spectrum, noise reduction, ...)5) Camera projection6) Advanced atomic particles7) Curve effect (yeess!)8) OpenFX supportSo this is the 2nd major update since it's first release and I hope, it will be improved over a long period...which directs me to the disadvantages compared to AE. Here's a list what could be improved in further versions (imho):1) It's overall performance could be better2) We need an expression system (scripting) to automate time-repeating stuff3) Better 3D object support (particle replicator, morphing, shader-support, ...)4) Bezier keyframes (for mask paths, too!)5) More audio tools, effects & filters as well as waveforms in comp editingConclusion:If you take the resell price, you'll get a lot cool features in a all-in-one app with a great community and direct feedback from the manufacturer. This app could be better - as every other software - but it has been heavily improved yet over the last updates and I love to play w/ all new versions. The latest update (HitFilm 3 Pro) is the biggest one in it's historie and allows you to do some really awesome stuff:1) Use it as an standalone editor for your filmed clips2) Export it to mp4, avi or image sequences (incl. alpha support)3) Import clips, audio, 3D objects, tracking data, ...4) Use dozen effects & filters to finialize your stuff5) Integrated generators for particles, 3D extrusion, text, ...6) Simple to use keyframe animation7) Build-in library for presets & effects...Note:HitFilm3 is a tool with unlimited possibilities...so there's no ONE explanation to solve a problem. You have several ways to do it. That's why this type of app isn't as easy as other ones, like Premiere, Vegas, Magix, ... You need to understand, what you're doing and why the effect x would affect the clip in that way, while effect y results into another output.For my personal purposes, HitFilm3 absolutly worth it's money.